Thursday, 3 April 2014

Harry at 4 Months

For me Harry is at his best age so far, he is full of smiles, laughs and is a joy to be around! I can play with him properly, read books with him and he reaches out to things he wants and will easily grasp them!

Weight: Harry is now a whopping 16lb 3 and he is certainly a bit of a unit, however he has dropped off of his line slightly so is only just in the 75th percentile - I am more than happy with this as he is a growing lad!!

Daily: Harry is in a proper napping routine and will have one pretty much after 2 - 2.5 hours of being awake. I thought this wasn't very long for a baby of his age to be awake for, but a lot of his baby pals seem to be very similar.

I have found that Harry is rather ratty and grumbly if we stay in all day at the house so I have been trying to keep as busy as possible and leave the house everyday, even if it's just for a walk or a trip to the shops for milk. I started to find it really hard being alone with a baby all the time as well this month (I felt like I was going loopy and got really lonely) so I'm going to start going to a few baby groups when I find something I like the sound of!

Bedtime: For just over a week now our little gem has been sleeping through! It's incredible and I never thought it would happen after weeks of constant waking up at 4am for no particular reason at all! He goes to bed between 7 and half 7 after a warm bath and his milky drink and will get himself off to sleep shortly after. We do occasionally hear a couple of moans from him in the night but we have learnt not to go into him and he soon soothes himself back to sleep. I have now put a couple of teddies and a comforter in there with him which seem to have really helped - we often catch him chatting to them in the morning!

He will generally wake up between half 6 and 7 and is ok to wait 15 mins or so before we go into him. Sometimes I'll go and turn his light in and he'll play with his mobile for a bit before letting us know that he's huuuuuungryyyy!!

Eating: Milk isn't top of Harry's list anymore and he is more into fruity porridge!! He has a whole 7oz bottle in the morning when he wakes and then a nice helping of his porridge to wash it down! He still feeds every 4 hours but never really a cries for his milk anymore. We also give him some "tea" around half 5 which again is just a helping of porridge with a couple of ounces of water - this is when he started sleeping though after we decided dinner would be included in his day! He still drinks his bedtime bottle (approx 6 ounces) and will pretty much sleep through with occasional 4-5am moans but nothing crazy

I have just started cooking up Harry's next foods, fruit and veg purees, so I will be posting all about that very soon!

Clothing: 0-3 month clothes are well and truly out of the question now which makes me sad!! Little H is not so little anymore and fits nicely into his 3-6 month outfits. I still dress Harry in leggings most of the time as they are just so comfy and he can roll and wiggle about easily in them - I think baby jeans and chinos are really tight and restrictive on him, does anyone else find that?

I get most of his clothes at the moment from Next, Mothercare and Gap as they have some really nice patterns and colours in for his age

Milestones:

Harry can easily hold his head up now and can sit really well with some support

He also has super strong legs, freakishly strong in fact, and he can stand with us just holding him very loosely!!!

He can roll over but is very selective as to when he does it

He can pretty much hold his water bottle with handles and tries ever so hard to get the teat to his mouth!!

Hearing: This last one has been a difficult one for us as it really hit us that Harry is deaf.. We've had some really down days where we have found it so hard to be positive and just both felt so frustrated that we can't just fix his little ears!

Hazza has some new more powerful hearing aids that our audiologist is confident will give him access to some sound and lo and behold Harry jumped when I dropped a plate this week and also when the front door slammed! Little things like this really give us huge hope for the future!

Harry has a big test in June when he will be 6 months old, to really see if the hearing aids are working for him or if we need to explore other options. For now though we just need to continue to stimulate him with sound and vision as much as we possibly can to keep up his development

5 comments

I love how you call Harry a "unit", that's funny. What a sweet little dude! My Bambino is two months now and I'm struggling to come to terms with the fact he is getting bigger, I'm just not ready for it :-P

But totally agree you need to be busy and join some baby groups so your not so lonely and some time off Mummy time helps so much also :)

I've just totally stalked your blog. Can't get enough of seeing other people's bumps while I wait for mine to 'pop' out! I just wanted to send my love. I work as a teacher of the deaf and just wanted to reassure you that there are so many different options for your wee one. Baby sign language is a really good shout as someone else said. Lots of people teach their babies to sign as they can communicate earlier I this way than through speech. It also means you are beginning to lay the groundwork for language which is really important.Anyway..all the love and luck for you all xxx